Thursday, December 31, 2009

I still have not finished my prototype for ED, but I did do a little thinking on it...

First off, while "expropriate" is a cool word, saying it a few times convinced me that I don't think it's a good game term. I'm using Colonize instead.

In thinking about how the game will play out, I have amended the way Colonizing will work. When using the Colonize action, 1 marker will be placed on a Planet for each Colonize symbol, and the action on the Colonize role card will be "Colonize (flip) a Planet which has the required number of Colonize icons on it." In fact, the markers could be the cards played - which could e interesting as it temporarily thins your deck of Colonize icons.

I like Warfare working differently - I like the idea of piling up spaceships, then spending them to 'attack' a planet. maybe the action on the Warfare role card is to 'attack' a planet - you'd need enough ships to defeat it, and you'd spend those ships in order to flip the planet. then you'd have to collect ships again before attacking another planet.

I did some thinking on costs and VPs as well. As for costs, I think planets should probably cost between 3 and 7 symbols. As for VPs, I think each tech deck could have 6 cads worth 0 vp, 4 cards worth 1 vp, and 2 cards worth 2vp. Then the planets could be worth between 2 and 6 or 7 vp each. That sounds reasonable for a starting point anyway...

One more thing that crossed my mind was the possibility of a Survey threshold... not only would you look at some number of Planets, but in order to take one you might have to have 'enough' Survey icons (threshold indicated by the card). In fact, to keep consistent with things like the Colonize action described above, maybe you add to your Survey icon pile (markers, or cards stacked up), and the ACTION on the Survey card is "survey 1 planet" - and the number of planets you look at is designated by the number of Survey icons you have set aside. Hmm... might be too much work, but might be good - I'll have to keep it in mind.

2 comments:

I recently played StarCraft and discovered that it has a mechanism reminiscent of your deck-building thing. Namely, you buy techs, each tech is represented by a card or three, which you subsequently shuffle into your combat deck, and eventually draw into your hand during combat or research.

That's true - Starcraft had exactly that idea as well! I forgot about that.

So the Research action in my game is nothing new then, the "new" aspect that I see in Eminent Domain is that choosing a role has the side affect of changing the configuration of your deck - which sort of encourages you to specialize in one (maybe 2) actions. I think it will turn out feeling similar to playing Magic, and making a deck that is 2 colors rather than 5 because the mana consistency is better that way.